Anthrax: 'We Don't Have Any Hits'

Guitarist Scott Ian says he doesn't consider his band as hitmakers.

Posted on Sep 04, 2013 09:36 am

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Anthrax axeman Scott Ian recently discussed some of the current setlist issues the band is facing, admiring he doesn't consider the veteran thrash act as hitmakers.
While chatting with Terrorized about the band's setlist at this year's Bloodstock festival, Ian said: "It'll be a 'greatest hits' set - which would be no songs 'cause we really don't have any hits, but to this crowd I guess it would be a greatest hits set."
Ian went on to talk about Anthrax setlists in general, noting it's impossible to please everyone. "It's not easy," he said. "Even if you took 'Worship Music' out of the equation and you just took five records from back in the day - you're never gonna please everybody. Sometimes you think 'Let's do something different, let's try something else off 'Spreading the Disease' that we haven't played as much."
Scott continued, "So you drop a song like 'Indians' and then people go 'Why didn't you play 'Indians?!' Well 'cause we play it every time. But then they get mad 'cause you don't play it."
Singer Joey Belladonna recently called the new record "the ultimate thing to do," expressing hope of getting the new material writing under way by the end of the year.
"A new album would be nice," he told EQPTV. "There are some music parts and pieces that people have. We're finishing up this run, this will be our last tour this year except for one more Maiden show in California in September."
Anthrax recently announced Jon Donais of Shadows Fall as the new full-time guitarist and a permanent replacement for Rob Caggiano who quit the band earlier this year.

Indians, Lone Justice, Gung-Ho, Medusa, A.I.R., N.F.L., Got The Time, Bring The Noize, Be All, End All, to name a few.
Athrology is one of my favorite metal greatest hits compilations, but they are the "No Hit Wonders"

I'm in the rare breed that likes Stomp 442 also. Great songs but they don't fit the direction that Anthrax has gone back to. Joey singing Bush era songs and Bush singing Joey era songs just do not sound right.

I want to see them play all of Persistence of Time like they did Among the Living. I'm one of the rare Anthrax fans that likes Persistence of Time best. Hell, that was the album that made me want to play guitar in the first place.

In the sense that it was played on MTV a fair bit, yeah.
But I think he means "hits" in the classic rock sense in which everyone knows the song word for word, riff for riff, like something by ACDC or Paranoid by Black Sabbath for instance.